


Plots Have I Laid

by Caprichoso



Series: Ambiguity AU [3]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: AU, Ambiguity AU, Gen, Miraculous Ladybug PV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 14:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14813331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caprichoso/pseuds/Caprichoso
Summary: It was only a matter of time before Adrien discovered the truth, or part of it; now, though, he needs answers, and Gabriel's reticence may destroy what little remains of their family.Further exploration of Gabriel's struggle against the Guardian's practice of choosing children to wield the Miraculous, and the consequences of him being discovered.





	Plots Have I Laid

**Author's Note:**

> This universe is the result of me smashing together the PV and canon universes in a horrible way. The general backstory was plotted out in the middle of Season 1; therefore, there is bound to be a good deal of deviation from canon, especially as more episodes air. The same warning applies as before: if a character is not alive and well as of Season 1 of the main series, they are likely dead here, and the PV universe has been warped closer to the canon one from repairing the damage caused by the battle that took their lives.
> 
> Set during the time frame of the regular series, somewhere after Simon Says. Warning for mild language. And as always, titles and quotes are cribbed from Richard III.

_“My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,_  
_And every tongue brings in a several tale,_  
_And every tale condemns me for a villain."_

_-Shakespeare, Richard III_

 

Even with all the pieces together, there was still so much missing. The whole wasn't greater than the sum of its parts this time, or even equal; it was as though a string had been pulled too tight, and the whole grand tapestry had bunched up into a mess.

As he regarded the kwami floating before him, proof positive of his father's crimes, Adrien couldn't help but feel cheated.

"So," he began, grasping and fumbling and hoping for words to come; what might one say to an unexpectedly-discovered demigod? "You're the butterfly kwami."

The kwami bobbed his head. "Yes," he said, voice rich despite his diminutive size. "I am Nooroo. It has been a very long time since I saw you last, Adrien."

Adrien stiffened. "We've met before?"

"In some sense, though it is highly unlikely you would remember. You were very young."

"Then you've been with my father for years," Adrien murmured. "But Hawkmoth has only been active since..."

"Since you and Ladybug received your Miraculous?" Nooroo supplied. "You are correct in that he has only been in the public eye since then, but he has been my Chosen since before you were born."

"And you've stayed with him, even after what he's done." Cocking his head to the side, Adrien looked the kwami in the eye. "Why would you stay?"

The smile Nooroo gave him was gentle but distant. "Gabriel is my Chosen. And despite his faults, his fallibility, he has always done what he believes to be right."

Adrien shook his head. "How could stealing our Miraculous be--"

The study door closed-- not quite a slam, but not gentle. Adrien whirled to find his father standing in the study, brow furrowed as he regarded the two figures before him. After a few seconds, he strode forward as though nothing were out of the ordinary. "Adrien. I see you've met Nooroo." Turning to the kwami, he gave a pointed nod. "Nooroo, I would like to speak with my son. Privately."

The little god hesitated for the briefest of moments, then acquiesced, flying into the brooch on the desk. Gabriel retrieved the Miraculous, placed it in the pocket of his slacks, and turned to Adrien.

Silence hung between them, waiting for one of them to begin; summoning his courage, Adrien took the first step toward the inevitable. "You're Hawkmoth."

Gabriel nodded, calm as ever. "That is correct. And as much as I might wish otherwise, you are Chat Noir."

"You were going to ask me to give you my Miraculous. Not as Hawkmoth; as my father." As the words tumbled out, the reality they represented began to solidify, and it was anything but comforting.

"I wish I still could, and I wish you would let go of it, but..." His father tapped a finger against his leg, then shrugged. "As you can see, circumstances have changed, and not in my favor."

Bile tainted the back of Adrien's tongue. "'Circumstances have _changed_?'" he repeated, incredulous. "I'm not a fabric supplier, I'm your son! And I'm a superhero, and you've been terrorizing Paris for years, and... how can you possibly be this callous?"

The infinitesimal smile and nod Gabriel gave him was tailored to hint at contrition without admitting any wrongdoing; it was just one of the entries in his father's catalog of expressions to be used as business tools. "I am aware of my... public image, as it were. In fact, I encouraged it, for a number of reasons. That said, there is always another side to the story, and I believe that if you were to listen, you would at least be able to understand the reasoning behind my actions."

"Oh my god," Adrien mumbled, fighting against the hysterical, panicked laughter that was shuddering in his chest. "Are we really about to go through the villain's tragic backstory?"

"I do not consider myself a villain, not that that means much. I am one of the Chosen, just as you are, and I have been since long before you were born. I fight for what I believe to be right, or when there is no clear right choice, for the greater good." Gabriel sighed, eyes flickering to the floor before he continued. "After your mother died, I was confronted with the most difficult decision I had ever faced, and for the first time in a very long time, she wasn't there to help guide me. I have no idea anymore if I chose the correct path, but I cannot stop yet. Soon, it will no longer matter, but I cannot give up until then."

"You chose to fight Ladybug and Chat Noir, to try to take our Miraculous." Adrien pursed his lips, dreading the logical conclusion hanging in the air between them. "Creation and destruction together... you're trying to bring her back, aren't you?"

Something flickered in his father's eyes, then was gone. "No. Too much time has passed; the consequences are too grave. I will not tear apart and remake reality just to save them. All I can do now is protect the living."

"'Them'? We were talking about Mom."

Again, a glint of that same emotion-- regret? "Your mother was not the only one we lost."

Thoughts whirled in Adrien's mind, possibilities coalescing into probabilities which became a single likelihood. "Felix?" he breathed. "You're talking about Felix too."

His father gave a small, tight-lipped nod. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but stopped short. A second attempt, and again he faltered, shaky smile displaying the tiniest sliver of teeth he never showed. The last time Adrien had seen that smile, a dress his father was presenting had literally fallen apart at the seams mid-runway. "It would appear," Gabriel said in the slow cadence he used to allow himself time to recover, "That I am... at a loss for words. I apologize, but I cannot elaborate."

A derisive snort betrayed Adrien's annoyance. Under normal circumstances, he would have been terrified of the repercussions, but he wasn't exactly worried about a supervillain's disapproval. It wasn't as though Hawkmoth could ground Chat Noir. "Of course you can't elaborate," he muttered. His father had rarely seen fit to explain anything to him; dictating was so much simpler than parenting, but now years of resentment bred from that choice were making themselves heard. "How about you just tell me what you wanted with our Miraculous, then? Or are you at a loss for _those_  words too?"

For the barest of moments, pain flashed in Gabriel's eyes; anyone else would have missed it, but then again, whoever else might have looked hadn't spent half a lifetime searching that face for any sign of emotion. Again he made as if to speak, then halted. A flicker of annoyance crossed his features before he schooled himself back into neutrality. "Something for the greater good. I am afraid that is all I can tell you at the moment--"

"No," Adrien snapped, blood roaring in his ears as his mouth rushed ahead of manners and conscious thought. The tenuous grip he'd maintained on his anger had slipped away, and it would have its long-overdue satisfaction. "You don't get to pick and choose what you tell me. For years, I've let you dictate every detail of my life on blind faith that you knew best. No more. You've lost your moral high ground, _Hawkmoth_. You're going to tell me everything, and then _I'm_  going to decide if you're right or wrong. You say this isn't about bringing back the dead? Then what the _hell_  are you--"

"I am _trying_!" Gabriel's snarl would have echoed through the mansion, had the doors been open; instead, it died in the study, suffocated by the books and blinds and the tension in the air that left no room for sound. As painful seconds ticked by, he seemed to shrink by centimeters. "Please," he whispered, voice as close to cracking as Adrien had ever heard. "Believe me, Adrien, I am trying to explain, but..." He trailed off into a wordless growl, fists clenching.

Reflexive tears welled in Adrien's eyes; no matter how old he got, he'd never be able to fully hold them back when his father raised his voice. This time, though, they carried with them a heat, an anger left to boil far too long. Now it began to spill over, trickle by trickle, as the moisture in his eyes longed to do. "Maybe this will help," he said, grating out each syllable. "You tell me right now, or I walk out of here, and Adrien Agreste disappears. I've always preferred being Chat Noir anyway."

As his words hung in the air, Adrien braced for the rush of guilt, the instinct screaming at him to apologize and take everything back, the apprehension as he waited for his bluff to be called. None came. It struck him as odd, but he felt nothing until the realization of what that meant settled on him and set his nerves abuzz.

He hadn't been bluffing.

He was ready to walk away... from all of it. From everything that had to to with being Adrien Agreste.

Gabriel, for his part, looked more completely unhinged than Adrien had ever seen him. His nostrils flared time and again, gasps tempered only by a tight-lipped mouth, even as his eyes alternated between locking on Adrien and losing focus entirely. Clenching and unclenching, desperate hands made a mess of perfectly-coiffed hair; it stuck up at odd and unattractive angles, and even as his fingers forsook his head to form fists, Gabriel made no move to repair the damage. His mouth moved with the suggestions of words, each aborted mid-syllable, and with each new attempt, he grew more agitated. Seconds passed, pressure mounting, until Gabriel Agreste, a man characterized by his inhumanly cool demeanor, let out a primal howl and lunged sideways, slamming both fists against the top of his desk. Drawings and documents, scraps and samples went flying in every direction as he swept the surface asunder without a thought as to the countless hours of work they represented. His forehead came to rest against the oak, and a ragged breath escaped him.

Adrien stood transfixed, rooted to the spot by a sight he couldn't reconcile with the entirety of his life experience. Practically nothing could draw even a touch of heat into his father's icy disposition; watching him fly into a violent rage was beyond surreal. Even as Adrien's mind rebelled against the evidence before him, some part of him insisted that this couldn't be the whole picture, that there had to be something else going on here.

"Damn you." The whisper yanked Adrien from his thoughts, drawing him back to where his father stood ramrod straight and trembling, eyes screwed shut as he faced Adrien again. The fury of his earlier outburst no longer blazed openly, but all of its intensity had been focused down, like the concentrated blue flame of a Bunsen burner. "Damn you to whatever hell will take you," Gabriel muttered. "You've already won, and you know it, so what difference does it make now?"

Adrien blinked repeatedly, staring aghast at his father. "I... what?"

Blue-gray eyes snapped open; a flicker of confusion, a flash of regret, and Gabriel shook his head as though released from whatever spell bound him to his rage. Though he had mostly regained his usual bearing, a slight hunch weighed down his shoulders, and stray hairs still defied his efforts to smooth them down. "Not you. I was..." He trailed off yet again, and a shadow of his recent anger clouded his eyes. "I did not mean you," he finished, seemingly as dissatisfied with his laconic response as Adrien was.

"Yourself?"

Gabriel let out a little huff, a pained sound that could have been a laugh in another lifetime. "That would also be appropriate, yes."

"Also," Adrien repeated, cocking his head. "Meaning someone else."

The weariness in his father's sigh went soul-deep. "I hope," he began, frequent pauses betraying the care with which he chose his words, "That you can... believe me when I say... there is... much that I would tell you if... circumstances were different."

Rolling the words around in his mind, Adrien began to recognize the outline of something unpleasant, a possibility he was loath to even entertain, but the framework matched up in entirely too many places. He needed answers, and he wasn't going to find them here. "I see." Biting his lip, he turned on one heel and strode away. Before he could reach the door, though, the carpet thumped with rapid, heavy steps, and the barest ghost of a hand descended on his shoulder; he turned back to something he had never thought to see.

"Adrien." His father's voice was hoarse, even as a whisper; he swallowed hard, eyes glistening as his fingers maintained their tentative, fearful contact with Adrien's shoulder. A simple shrug, a single step, and it would fall away. "Please... don't." A tear broke free, one tiny drop carrying all of the words that neither had ever spoken to the other. They were words Adrien had feared to say aloud, words he had feared even more that he would go his entire life without hearing, but here they were, spoken silently but no less powerfully: _Please don't go. Please don't leave me. I need you._

_I love you._

Adrien flung his arms around his father, shattering the barrier that had been growing between them ever since Adrien had been sent home alone from his mother's funeral. Massive sobs wracked his body, years of accumulated hurt and doubt and need rushing out as he buried his face in a tailored shirt that smelled of childhood comfort and safety. Strong arms encircled him, initial hesitance and guilt giving way to relief as Gabriel's chest began to heave as well, nose coming to rest in Adrien's hair.

When Gabriel Agreste cried, it was in broken coughs, guttural and reedy and utterly undignified. Neither of them cared what form the catharsis took, though; only that it happened, then and there.

Seconds or minutes or an hour later, when they were steady enough to breathe again, they parted slowly, tentatively, as though they both needed the reassurance that this embrace could happen again before they were willing to let it end. Even as he sniffed the last traces of his tears away, Gabriel's thumb brushed against Adrien's shoulder, awkward and uncertain, but he made no attempt to remove his hand.

The silence between them was more comfortable than any Adrien could recall, and it was with some reluctance that he broke it. "That cologne... it's not what you usually wear, is it? It's really familiar, for some reason, but I don't know why."

Gabriel's smile only touched one corner of his mouth, and it was gone in an instant-- it was genuine. "It was a gift. You helped your mother choose it for my birthday, just before she..." He trailed off, but for once Adrien didn't begrudge him the reticence; broken open as they both were right now, old hurts were as painful as new ones. "I stopped wearing it years ago, but after our encounter with Simon Says... it made me realize that, yes, I lost her-- _we_  lost her-- but despite all of my failures, I haven't lost you. Not yet, not forever. And I needed to remind myself of that." A pained wheeze of a laugh. "Not that it kept me from driving you away regardless. These adjustments take time, and change has never been my forte."

Adrien nodded, throat tightening again. It was too much, too fast; his emotional state was utter chaos, with a mind to match. "Speaking of time," he croaked, "I need to process. This is... it's a lot, and there are still so many gaps."

Stiffening, Gabriel gave a single nod. "I understand." He glanced at his hand as if surprised to see it resting on Adrien's shoulder, and let it drop back down to be clasped and controlled by his other hand. "I wish I could--"

"Papa." The name was infantile, but it plucked at something between them that vibrated in response. Adrien hadn't addressed his father as anything but _father_  or _sir_  since he was a toddler; now, so many years later, the childhood name was a reminder of a closeness they'd once shared, a promise that things could still be mended. Looking up into eyes that shone with a mixture of surprise and awe, he allowed himself to take hold of Gabriel's hand. "It's okay." _We'll be okay. I'm not leaving you. I still love you._  "I'll see you later, all right?"

A sigh of relief bordering on a sob rushed out of Gabriel's lungs. "Thank--" he began, only to fail as his voice cracked, forcing him to drop to a whisper. "Thank you. Take... take as much time as you need."

Adrien nodded, opening the study door and plodding back to his room in an almost trancelike state.

As he sat on the bed, staring at the ring on his finger, he gathered his courage for another difficult conversation. "Plagg," he murmured, "I need some answers, and I'm pretty sure you're the one who has them."


End file.
